The session, which was held on the occasion of the West
African Internet Governance Forum 2021, focused on how to encourage more
countries to use ROAM-X indicators for improving national Internet development
and digital policies in West Africa.
The session was moderated by Dr Kossi Amessinou, who
underlined the main objective to engage an extended partnership with the
Internet community of West Africa by mobilizing them to participate in Dynamic
Coalition and provide the necessary tools to conduct national assessments in
all ECOWAS countries.
Tony Ojobo, President of the African ICT Foundation
commended the collaboration with UNESCO and highlighted the need to carry out
periodic evaluations in African countries to enable the improvement of national
Internet governance.
The ROAM principles and indicators go beyond the traditional
rational of physical access. They contribute to comprehensively advancing
digital inclusion, focusing on multiple dimensions of human rights, open
Internet, quality of access and inclusive multi-stakeholder governance for
building resilient West Africa and achieving SDGs.
Dorothy Gordon, Chair of UNESCO’ Information for All
Programme, reaffirmed the need for strong advocacy from national and regional
stakeholders to implement the national assessment of IUIs across the West-African
countries. She further called for more engagement from civil society to
represent vulnerable and marginalized groups, such as disabled people, women or
the youth.
Professor Alain Kiyindou pointed out that the ROAM-X
indicators assessment in countries like Benin and Niger offers tremendous
opportunities to push forward the development of Internet in West Africa. This
framework empowers national stakeholders to gain a better understanding of
their digital landscape and engage in the digital transformation and inclusion
process.
Representing Development House, Kafui Aheto introduced the
initial findings of the ongoing national assessment of ROAM-X indicators in
Ghana. He highlighted the importance of multi-stakeholderism in guiding the
overall assessment process and building policy development in Ghana.
ROAM-X indicators assessments have been progressing in 28
countries, including the following African countries: Benin, Senegal, Kenya,
Ghana, Niger, Ethiopia, Cote d’Ivoire, Cabo Verde, Burkina Faso.
All participants agreed on the importance for African
countries to mainstream ROAM principles and the urgent need to expand advocacy,
capacity-building, resource mobilization and multistakeholder partnerships to
scale up national assessment projects across the region.
UNESCO encourages all countries in the West-African
subregion to continue using the ROAM framework and join the Dynamic Coalitionon Internet Universality Indicators (IUIs) to bring Internet forward in the
region.
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